President Donald Trump has signed off on legislation restoring funding to most of the Department of Homeland Security, bringing to a close the longest shutdown in the department’s history after months of wrangling over immigration enforcement money.

The House cleared the bill by voice vote on Thursday after the Senate had already passed it, a hurried end to a standoff that had left employees at agencies including the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency working without routine funding since 14 February. According to Associated Press, the White House had warned that the temporary cash used to keep some staff paid was close to running out, raising fresh fears of disruption at airports.

The breakthrough came after Republicans agreed to separate out money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, leaving those agencies to a different budget track. Reuters-style reporting from several outlets described the move as a concession to Senate Democrats, who had pressed for limits on immigration agents after fatal incidents in Minneapolis helped intensify the fight over Trump’s deportation agenda. In the House, Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro called the delayed vote "about damn time", while Texas Republican Chip Roy denounced the split as an attack on frontline immigration officers.

The broader fight has now exposed how badly Congress has mishandled the annual spending cycle. Instead of finishing the dozen regular appropriations bills by 1 October, lawmakers have lurched through a series of shutdowns over the past year, including a 43-day lapse tied to Affordable Care Act tax credits and an earlier partial closure before the latest DHS impasse began on 14 February. Axios reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune later settled on a two-track approach, pairing the DHS bill with a budget resolution that opens the door to reconciliation.

That separate process is now expected to be used to advance funding for ICE and the Border Patrol, with Republicans signalling they want to secure tens of billions of dollars for immigration enforcement without having to win Democratic support for new guardrails. The immediate crisis is over, but the next deadline is not far away: Congress still has to fund the rest of the government before the new fiscal year begins on 1 October, and another failure would land just weeks before November’s midterm elections.

Source Reference Map

Inspired by headline at: [1]

Sources by paragraph:

Source: Noah Wire Services